Birth of the Kingdom. Jan Guillou

fell to his knees to greet his stepmother courteously; he was almost knocked to the ground when she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him as shamelessly as only a mother can do. Everyone could see that the returning warrior was unused to such practices.

      Wagons were pulled creaking and rattling into the courtyard of the fortress. Heavy crates and a multitude of weapons were unloaded and carried into the armoury in the tower. Outside the walls a tent camp fashioned from ships’ sails and exotic carpets was quickly raised, and many willing hands helped to set up gates and fencing for all of Sir Arn’s horses. Calves were taken to be slaughtered and the spit-turners lit their fires. All around Arnäs a promising aroma soon spread of the evening to come.

      When Arn greeted the guards, some of whom were unwilling to kneel before him, he abruptly asked after his father with a tense expression, as if preparing himself for sad news. Eskil replied gruffly that their father was no longer in his right mind and had retreated to the tower. Arn strode at once toward the tower, his white mantle with the red cross billowing like a sail around him so that all those in his path quickly moved aside.

      Up on the highest parapet he found his father in a miserable state but with a happy expression on his face. His father was standing next to the wall with a house thrall supporting his lame side. In his healthy hand he held a rough walking-stick. Arn quickly bowed his head and kissed his father’s good hand and then gathered him in his arms. His father felt as frail as a child, his good arm was as thin as his lame one, and he exuded a rank odour. Arn stood there unable to think of what to say, when his father with great effort, his head trembling, leaned toward him and whispered something.

      ‘The angels of the Lord…shall rejoice…and the fatted calf…shall be slain.’

      Arn heard the words quite clearly, and they were judiciously chosen, as they so clearly referred to the story in the Holy Scriptures of the return of the Prodigal Son. All the talk of his father’s lost reason was simply nonsense. With relief Arn picked the old man up in his arms and began to walk around the parapet to see how he had been living up here. When he saw the dark tower room it was worse than he had feared. He frowned at the strong odour of piss and rotting food. He spun around and headed for the stairs, speaking to his father as to a man of reason like any other, the way no one had spoken to him in many years. Arn said that the lord of Arnäs would no longer have to live in a pigsty.

      On the narrow, winding tower staircase he met Eskil slowly ascending, since the stairs were not designed for sizable men with a paunch. Grumbling, Eskil now had to turn around and go back down, with Arn close behind him, carrying their father like a bundle over one shoulder as he barked orders about everything that needed to be done.

      Out in the courtyard Arn set his father down, since it would be disgraceful to carry him any further like a sheaf of rye. Eskil ordered the house thralls to bring tables and feather-beds and the dragon-carved seat to one of the cookhouses by the south wall that were used only for large feasts. Arn bellowed that his father’s tower room was to be scoured from floor to ceiling, and many pairs of astonished eyes watched as the three men proceeded across the courtyard of the fortress.

      The seat with the carved dragon coils was delivered at once to the cookhouse, and there Arn tenderly deposited his father. He dropped to his knees, took his father’s face in his hands, looked him in the eyes, and said that he was well aware that he was speaking to a father who understood everything just as well as he had before. Eskil stood in silence behind him and said not a word.

      But old Herr Magnus now seemed so overwhelmed and was breathing so hard that there might be a risk he would suffer another stroke. Arn took his hands from his father’s face, stood up, and strode past his bewildered older brother out to the courtyard, giving an order in a language nobody could understand.

      At once two men from the many foreigners in Arn’s entourage came forward. They were both dressed in dark cloaks and had blue cloth wound around their heads; one was young and the other old, and their eyes were as black as those of ravens.

      ‘These two men,’ said Arn, addressing his brother, but also his father, ‘are named…Abraham and Joseph. They are both my friends from the Holy Land. And they are masters of the healing arts.’

      He explained something in an unintelligible language to the two raven-eyed men, who nodded that they understood. They began to examine Herr Magnus carefully, but without undue deference. They studied the whites of his eyes, listened to his breathing and his heart, struck his right knee with a little club so that his foot kicked straight out, then did the same several times with his left knee, which moved only slightly. They seemed particularly interested in that. Then they raised and lowered his weak left arm as they whispered to each other.

      Eskil, who stood behind Arn, felt left out and at a loss, seeing two foreigners handling the lord of Arnäs as if inspecting some thrall child. But Arn signalled to him that all was as it should be, and then he had a brief whispered conversation in the foreign language, whereupon the two physicians retreated, bowing deeply to Eskil.

      ‘Abraham and Joseph have good news,’ said Arn when he and Eskil were alone. ‘Our father is too tired right now, but tomorrow the healing work will begin. With God’s help our father will be able to walk and speak once again.’

      Eskil said nothing. It was as if his first joy at seeing Arn had already been clouded, and he felt a little ashamed at appearing to be the one who had not taken care of his father. Arn gave his brother a searching look and seemed to understand these hidden feelings. He threw his arms wide and they fell into each other’s embrace. They stood that way a long time without saying a word. Eskil, who seemed more bothered by the silence than Arn, finally muttered that it was a scrawny little brother who had come to the feast.

      Amused, Arn replied that it appeared Eskil had managed well enough to keep the wolf from the door at Arnäs, and that he had certainly not been diminished by continuing the legacy of their ancestor, jarl Folke the Fat. Then Eskil burst out laughing and shook his younger brother back and forth with feigned indignation, and Arn let himself be shaken as he joined in the laughter.

      When their merriment subsided, Arn led his brother over to their father, who was sitting quite still in his beloved chair with the dragon carvings. His left arm hung limp at his side. Arn fell to his knees and pulled Eskil down with him so that their heads were close together. Then he spoke in a kindly tone and not as if to a man who had lost his wits.

      ‘I know that you can hear and understand everything just as before, dear Father. You don’t have to answer me now, because if you strain yourself too much it will only get worse. But tomorrow the healing will begin, and starting tomorrow I will sit with you and tell you everything that happened in the Holy Land. But now Eskil and I will take our leave, so that he can tell me what has happened here at home. There is much that I’m impatient to know.’

      With that the two sons got to their feet and bowed to their father as before. They thought they could see a little smile on his lopsided face, like the glow from a fire that was far from extinguished.

      When they left the cookhouse Eskil grabbed a passing house thrall and told him that Herr Magnus was to have his bed, water, and pisspot brought to him there in the cookhouse, and that the floor should be covered with birch boughs.

      In the courtyard of the fortress people and house thralls were rushing about on all sorts of errands to prepare for the unexpected welcome feast, which now had to be readied in haste and with greater grandeur than an ordinary banquet at Arnäs. But those who came near the two Folkung brothers, now walking arm in arm towards the gate, shrank back almost as if in terror. Herr Eskil was said to be the richest man in all of Western Götaland, and everyone knew enough to fear the power that resided in silver and gold, although Herr Eskil himself often invited more ridicule than fear. But next to him now walked his brother, the long-absent warrior Arn, whom the sagas had made much taller and broader than he was in truth. Yet everyone could see by his stride, by his scarred face, and by the way he wore his sword and chain-mail as though they were his normal attire, that now the other power had indeed come to Arnäs – the power of the sword, which most sensible people feared far more than the power of silver.

      Eskil and Arn went out through the gate and down